BACnet-native drives help to drive down energy costs for BT call centre

Published: 02 September, 2007

Incorporating ABB drives directly into the BACnet-based building-management system of BT’s Castle Wharf site in Nottingham has contributed to a major reduction in electricity costs.

Installing ABB drives for fans in a new HVAC system for BT’s call centre for 999 calls in Nottingham has contributed to reducing electricity costs by 23%. Gas usage for the site has also been reduced by a massive 88% by better control of the HVAC system.

Castle Wharf is a large BT site occupied by about 900 people. It is mainly offices, and has a 24-hour call centre.

Steve Smith, BT’s energy manager for the site, explains, ‘We needed to refurbish the HVAC system and wanted to install variable-speed drives because we knew there was a potential for energy saving. As the fans were not speed controlled, this led to a large waste of energy. Also, the car-park ventilation was not needed at night and needed to be controlled as well.

‘Additionally, our building-management system was not set up the way we wanted, so we decided to use a BACnet-based system. This would allow us to zone the building and introduce time controls to take account of occupancy patterns.’

The system was installed by ADT Fire & Security, which has a contract to update and refurbish the building-management control in a number of BT installations around the country. Pat Boyce, BMS senior projects engineer, says, ‘ABB is our preferred supplier of drives, mainly because they have the only native BACnet drive in the UK.’

The 18 ABB HVAC drives range in size from 5.5 to 30 kW and run supply and extract fans in air-handling units. The drives are linked into the BACnet network, which consists of a single twisted pair daisy-chained throughout the whole installation and relaying data between the user’s graphical front end and the drives. This data can include the energy used by the drive — useful information for controlling costs.

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